


Finding His Princess

by Daebakinc



Category: Johnny Seo - Fandom, Kpop - Fandom, NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cinderella Elements, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-09-03 01:59:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16754728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daebakinc/pseuds/Daebakinc
Summary: A servant and a prince can never be. Or is there some truth to the tale of Cinderella?





	Finding His Princess

If anyone else looked at this room, they would doubtlessly be caught up in the splendor. 

The warm mahogany panels of the walls and floor, polished daily, covered by hand-sewn Persian rugs and oil paintings in gilded frames alike. The four-poster bed with its one-of-a-kind blanket filled with the softest down in the land and embroidered with real gold. The heavy silver inkstand on the desk that’s worth more than a most people’s yearly income.

But, having grown up surrounded by such wealth, you are blind to it. You only see the hints of the room’s owner.

The piano in the corner whose keys have edges rounded by love and practice, but he won’t replace. The stacks of CDs and albums organized by affection rather than alphabet or genre, so he can find them according to his mood. The old white whale doll with mismatched eyes tucked safely beneath the pillow.

Your eyes burn with the pain growing and spreading in your chest as you take it all in for one last time. You wish you could see his smile one more time, hear one more of those stupid jokes he loves to tell. One last chance to look at the man you love and can never have.

For how can a servant girl, a part time one at that, marry a prince, even in these modern times?

Easy answer: you can’t.

There’s only one task left to do. One task left before you leave him and the palace behind to try to reconstruct your heart into the resemblance of a working one. A heart that does not belong entirely and forever to the heir to the throne, Johnny.

Yet you cannot force your fingers to place the cerulean hoodie in its proper place in the dresser drawer. Instead, they tighten around the fabric, bring it to your face. The smell of him surrounds you and summons memories like a taunting demon. 

When Johnny hugged you to chase away your tears after you skinned your knee in the days you were both younger and so innocent as to believe you could be friends forever. When you held him as he cried the night after his mother’s funeral, alone in the shadows of her favorite rose garden. When your head rested on his shoulder while the two of you—

The bedroom door slams shut and you guiltily drop the hoodie. Johnny leans against the door, eyes shut. He looks so handsome in his official uniform of a navy-blue military jacket with gold trims and epaulets, fitted white pants, and tall black boots. A true prince.

But the gold crown nestled in his dark hair seems to weigh down on him, pushing his forehead so it creases in exhaustion. Johnny sighs, long and hard, and rubs his temples. You ache to replace his fingers with yours, but you stay still. He isn’t yours to touch, let alone desire.

Johnny opens his eyes. He takes a step further into the room, removing the crown. His frown deepens as he looks at it. His arm raises as if to toss it onto the bed, but hurriedly returns to his side when he notices you.

An earnest grin springs onto his face. “_____. I didn’t see you.”

“Crown Prince Johnny,” you reply, bobbing a curtsy and using the movement to hide your closing the drawer. “I’m sorry, I was about to leave.”

“Crown Prince?” His smile incrementally fades. “Since when have you bothered with that title when we’re alone? We’re still friends, aren’t we?”

Friends. How much pain that word brings your heart. You attempt a smile. “We are, but since you’ve begun looking for a bride, it isn’t very proper to do so, Your Highness.”

Johnny’s smile disappears entirely. “Proper.”

“Has your search for your missing princess been successful?” you ask, even though your heart twinges. You already know the answer.

“Only in finding a number of charlatans and gold-diggers.” He sighs again and crosses the room to slump in the overstuffed, velvet chair. “I’m ready to give up and accept the princess my father chose, ______. His deadline is only a few days away and I can’t find the girl from the ball. I thought we had something, but why would she have run away if that was true? Why wouldn’t she have come back? Maybe I and everyone else at the ball was hallucinating and she never existed.”

Your body moves out of habit before you realize what you’re doing. Coming beside him, you turn on the small stereo and select the playlist that Johnny always listens to when he needs soothing. As his father nears retirement, those times are becoming more and more frequent. You ignore the emerald dragon mask also sitting on the desk, its empty eyes watching you accusingly.

“I hope you find your happiness,” you say. 

When he doesn’t answer, you glance to the door. You want so badly to lay a reassuring hand on his shoulder, to run your fingers through his hair. You should probably leave before you give in.

But again, your body betrays you, your mouth blurting out, “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Leaving?” Johnny’s head comes up from where it had dropped to his hands. The concern on his face is genuine and all the more meaningful for it. “Is your mother sick again?”

“She was fine during my last call home, thank you. I’m leaving the palace for good.”

His features, so normally schooled to control every emotion, betray his alarm with his widened eyes and deepened frown. “Just like that? Why? Did something happen? Did someone do something to you?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s just… time for me to move on.” You try to give him a true smile as you back away from him. “Thank you for all your kindness over the years, Your Highness. I will… miss you.”

You turn away to go before your courage fails you, but Johnny’s hand snakes out to grab yours. “Wait!”

He says nothing else. You risk a look over your shoulder and find him staring at your joined hands. The electric tingle winding up your arm starts your heart stuttering. It tap-dances in your ears as your cheeks heat. You need to get out, run away, but you’re frozen.

“Johnny,” you murmur.

He meets your eyes at his name. After another beat, he lets go of you and picks up the soft hairbrush sitting on his desk. “Could you help me fix my hair, please? I have to meet with the interior ministers soon.”

“Surely your manservant would—”

“_____, please.”

Although you aren’t looking in his eyes, you cannot deny him nor yourself such a small thing. You accept the brush from him. He turns in his chair for you.  
As you pass the brush through his hair, Johnny’s shoulders loosen, relax under your steady strokes. You smile to yourself. Johnny’s mother use to brush his hair when he was a child before he went to bed. Even now, the motions calm him like no other. He was surely meant to be born a big cat, like a puma, and only became a human by mistake.  
Even after his hair is returned to its perfect appearance, you continue brushing. You cannot help the small indulgence. It will be the last time you are with him so.

The thought jars your practical side back into place. This is foolishness. Abruptly, you put the brush back down on the desk. “I think you’re done, Your Highness.”

Johnny doesn’t look back. Lifting his crown from his lap, he says, “Put this on for me, please. From the front so you’re sure it looks alright.”

With slow steps, you circle the chair and take the crown from him. You cautiously place it back on his head, avoiding his eyes that you feel so intently on you. You know if you look, your resolve may crumble in the face of the entire world he holds there. Your world.

Satisfied with your work, you lower your hands and say, “You look like a true prince.”

Johnny stiffens. “Strawberries,” he murmurs.

“What?” His sudden comment forces your eyes down to his in surprise.

“You smell like strawberries,” Johnny repeats.

He lurches to his feet so you stumble backwards against the desk. Your heart thumps hard, once, twice, as Johnny’s probing gaze commands yours. It purposefully roams your face until you’re afraid he can see your every thought.

“Hug me,” he says.

“Wh—what?”

“Hug me.”

You remain frozen, mind racing to comprehend. You take too long.

Johnny steps closer and sweeps you up against him. You should break away, run away. Run before you give in to your heart’s desire and stay by his side.

Your bodies fit together like puzzle pieces lost and reunited. His arms hold you tenderly, fiercely. His cheek presses against yours, breath on your neck raising goosebumps on your skin.

A shaking breath escapes you. You close your eyes and let your head rest against his chest. Just for one moment, you can be weak. Soak it, him, in to create a precious memory to lock away in your heart.

Johnny lifts his head. Again, you can’t look away when his eyes find yours. 

He studies you a breath longer. Softly, his words a puff of air against your mouth, he says, “It’s you, isn’t it?”

All the warmth flees your body. Your heart stops and drops to your feet. How…? Of course, you should have known. Beneath Johnny’s carefree manners lies a quick and observant mind. 

You shouldn’t have let him get this close. You hadn’t meant for it to go this far. 

All the kingdom had been invited to Johnny’s birthday ball. Nobles and commoners rubbed elbows and traded jokes from behind masks that rendered them all equals for the night. You had just wanted to go to the ball, experience the glitter and elegance for yourself. In a dress borrowed from the royal castoffs and a mask borrowed from the royal theater troupe, you watched from the sides.

Then, he was in front of you. Even with his face hidden behind a black panther’s snarling face, you knew him. Dressed in all black, sleek as the creature of his disguise, he held out his hand. And, with no other choice, you took it.

It seemed a dream, a marvelous, sparkling, floating dream. The colors and sounds fading into the background until only you and Johnny existed in the whole world. Johnny’s strong arm at your back, his large hand cradling yours like a delicate bird. His eyes gazing into yours with a kind of wonder that left you breathless.

When he led you into a secluded section of the garden, away from curious whispers, Johnny’s eyes shone even brighter with the moonlight. Somehow, it made his words sultrier, more adoring as well as he whispered them.

When he kissed you, you were lost, completely and deeply. That secret love you had held for Johnny for so long burst into life like the full bloomed roses surrounding you. His kiss was more perfect than you could have ever imagined.

Above you, the bell in the clock tower tolled. The brassy tones shattered the spell like a brick does stained glass.

With a gasp, you pulled away. This was Johnny Seo, Crown Prince and future king. He was meant for someone greater than you, a nameless face in the sea of palace servants.  
Ignoring his cry, you fled. You felt him reach for you, grasping. He tripped and the knotted ribbon holding your mask in place pulled, then broke. You ran faster, face in your hands to hide both it and the tears flowing down your cheeks.

He would never know it was you, but now… you have nowhere to hide.

Johnny plucks the mask from behind you, keeping one arm wrapped around you. You stop breathing as he settles it on your face.

“It is you,” Johnny says again, his voice barely above a whisper. He lets the mask fall to the carpet. “Tell me what I said to you in the garden.”

The thought to lie and deny him still dies in your throat. Your voice trembles as you cling tighter to his coat. “You said… that you felt that our hearts are connected under the same sky.”

You have a second to glimpse the blinding smile on Johnny’s face before his mouth swoops down to yours. His kiss is jubilant, eager. With that kiss, he takes your heart, your body, your everything. If you weren’t caught between him and the desk, you would assuredly be a melted heap on the floor.

When he at last allows you a breath, you can’t help but stare up at him. All words and thoughts robbed from your mind. Johnny strokes his thumb across your cheek, down to the swollen pout of your lips. He kisses you again, softer, but still as soul-claiming as the first.

“Johnny, we can’t,” you protest weakly. The bright crown on his head catches your eye, reminds you of his duties. “You’re supposed to marry a princess, preserve the integrity of royal line—”

“Whoever marries me will be a princess, royal blood or not,” he interrupts. Johnny cups your face in his hands, confidence and stubbornness shining in his eyes. “This is modern day, not the Dark Ages. My father gave me his word; you heard him. Whoever I wanted to marry, I could.”

Hearing the word ‘marry’ makes you almost as dizzy as Johnny’s kiss. To be able to be with him as best friend, lover, wife… only yesterday you would have thought it impossible.

“But why me?” you ask in a daze.

Of all things, Johnny laughs. He kisses the tip of your nose. “Because I love you.”

“You love that girl from the ball.”

“Who was also you. I was just too stupid to realize.”

“Johnny.”

He refuses to let you turn away. “No. I love you, _____. Does that really seem so unlikely to you? You were a vision at the ball, an angel I thought had sprung from my mind and one I saw slip through my fingers. But you are the angel who’s been by my side and who’s in front of me now.”

Tears spring from the corners of your eyes. How could any of what he’s saying be true. You grew up together and not once did he show you more affection or consideration than any other.

“_____, do you know how crazy I was when you went away to university?” he asks. “Every day I missed you, and I told myself it was because you were, are, one of my dearest friends. When you came back, I made sure you got this job, so I could see you every once in a while, if not every day.”

You stare back at him, speechless.

“Marrying anyone wasn’t in my head at that point. Then my father brought it up and started parading all those possible matches in front of me like some twisted fashion show and… I don’t know. I got lost, I guess. I didn’t want to get married yet.”

“So you don’t want to get married at all?”

Johnny winces. “That didn’t come out right. I didn’t want to get married to any of them. I didn’t feel anything for them. I don’t want a marriage of convenience or alliance. Politics doesn’t create and keep a family. That’s not what I want with my life. With you, it wouldn’t be that way. It’d be…”

“It would be what?” you murmur when he doesn’t continue.

“Do you know what my father once told me?” he offers instead.

You shake your head.

“He told me that sometimes, the treasure you seek is lying right beneath your nose.” Johnny smiles. “And he was right. I want to spend the rest of my life rediscovering it. Do you forgive this fool for taking so long to see you?”

You lick your lips. Presented with the opportunity for such happiness, especially a happiness you never thought possible, could you refuse? Looking into Johnny’s eyes, all the worries and reasons you two could never be vanish like shadows in the sun. 

Reaching up, you adjust his crown. Then, meeting his eyes, you shyly nod. “I think I could if you kiss me again.”

And he does.


End file.
